Antidote
by Meryl Edan
Summary: Brenda's husband thinks he has a solution to her problem.


_Fritz awoke at 2:26 a.m. feeling as though he'd been sleeping inside a furnace. His mouth was dry and his skin damp, and it took him only a short moment to decide he couldn't spend the rest of the night in bed. He stood up and squinted in the darkness to find his t-shirt and boxers, which Brenda had stripped from him and tossed to the floor a few hours earlier._

_After locating and pulling on his clothes, Fritz turned back to look at his wife. Brenda slept soundly on her side beneath the sheet, one fist balled under her chin, her other arm thrown haphazardly around the waist of Sharon Raydor, who slept next to her. As Fritz watched, Sharon shifted slightly and Brenda tucked herself tighter along Sharon's back. The women looked peaceful, even affectionate, and Fritz smiled to himself, confident that the tension between the two was over and their lives could all return to normal._

"Ooh, that woman!"

Fritz watched his wife stomp through the front door for the fourth evening in a row, cursing the name and ancestry of the woman who had come to be her nemesis at work. Fritz had a hard time figuring out why Brenda couldn't get along with Sharon Raydor - his own dealings with the FID captain had been nothing but pleasantly professional. He found Raydor both efficient and polite, and couldn't imagine her as the cunning antagonist Brenda claimed she was.

"Brenda." Fritz followed her into the bedroom.

Brenda muttered to herself and waved her hands in imaginary conversation as she kicked off her shoes and shrugged out of her pink blazer.

"Brenda, honey," Fritz repeated, this time crossing the room to take his wife by the shoulders. Brenda started at the contact and met her husband's eyes for the first time since arriving home. Her gaze darkened and with one hand on Fritz's chest, she pushed him backward toward their bed, while her other hand made quick work of his belt and fly.

_Fritz sprawled out over the cool leather of the sofa and sighed in relief. He pulled the throw blanket from the back of the couch and tossed it down over his legs before folding his hands behind his head and closing his eyes. He thought sleep might be slow to come as images from the evening played back in his mind, but the heavy fog of satiation descended over him and soon he was asleep._

Fritz examined the bitemark on his shoulder in the bathroom mirror. While he was more than fine with Brenda's demanding libido of late, he couldn't squelch a small twinge of disappointment that her interest in him was so obviously driven by her frustration with the FID captain. By this point in their marriage, he was used to Brenda never quite being completely present with him and had resigned himself to always coming second to her work. This new situation felt different though, this focus of Brenda's on another person, but Fritz tried to shrug it off as his own fatigue-induced paranoia.

Fritz finally had the chance to see the two women interact when he retrieved Brenda from her office at the end of a long day. As he approached, he wove his way through Brenda's team, which was eavesdropping en masse on the screaming coming from behind Brenda's closed door.

"I can't work with you harping at me constantly!"

"When are you going to get it through your thick Georgia skull that I'm trying to help you?"

Fritz felt that was an auspicious time to enter. He knocked once by way of warning, then swung the door open, ready to enter and break up the skirmish.

He stopped short at the scene before him.

Brenda and Sharon stood on opposite sides of Brenda's desk, both leaning forward, braced on their hands. Their faces were no more than a foot apart and both women were flushed and breathing heavily. Fritz knew that look on Brenda's face. It was the one she'd come home with night after night last month, the one that invariably led to teeth marks somewhere on Fritz's body.

Now his wife was looking at Sharon Raydor that way, like it was all she could do not to spring over the desk, topple the brunette to the floor, and sink her teeth into her. And Sharon was returning the expression like a mirror.

Ever quick to compose herself, upon hearing Fritz enter, Sharon stood and straightened her suit jacket. She cast a threatening grimace over her shoulder to Brenda as she left the office, greeting Fritz with a clipped "Agent Howard" as she slid past him through the doorway.

Fritz closed Brenda's door behind him. "Are you okay, baby?"

Brenda stood up fully. A pink blush crept down her chest toward the neckline of her low-cut blouse. Her arousal would have been alluring if Fritz hadn't known the source of it was currently clacking down the Major Crimes hallway toward the elevators.

"I'm fine. That woman just gets under my skin like no one else does."

_Brenda stirred to consciousness sometime in the early morning hours, not enough to wake fully, but enough to register that the body she was curled against was soft and warm, and the fingers threaded through hers were delicate. Though she usually liked to sleep stretched out on her side of the bed, something irresistible drew her to this body next to her. She pressed her nose to the back of Sharon's neck before returning to sleep._

Brenda paced the breadth of Will's office, trying her darnedest to keep as far as possible from Sharon, who sat reviewing her notes as they both waited for their boss to arrive. Despite her best efforts to ignore the other woman, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sharon tuck a lock of hair behind her ear and let her fingers idle at the curve of her neck.

Brenda swallowed hard.

Three nights ago, Fritz had suggested that Brenda's tension with Sharon was sexual, had even continued that if she wanted to try to relieve it, he was willing to invite Sharon into their bed. Brenda was offended, an animated fight had ensued, and Fritz spent that night on the couch. They hadn't spoken of it since, but Brenda could think of nothing else.

Brenda wanted to believe that Fritz had succumbed to some kind of mid-life crisis that was inspiring fantasies. She knew he wasn't bored with her though, knew that he cared for her deeply and wouldn't have suggested something so outlandish without reasonable confidence in his assessment of the situation.

Moreover, deep, deep down, Brenda knew Fritz was right. Sharon enraged her, but she did other things too. Sharon challenged her, kept her sharp and inquisitive. She was smarter than anyone else Brenda worked with, and as ambitious and dedicated as Brenda herself. Brenda felt the air crackle when Sharon walked into the room - Brenda thought it was because her appearance always meant something was about to happen.

But maybe it was more. Brenda snuck a peek at Sharon again. The older woman checked her watch and groaned at Will's tardiness. The sound shot straight to Brenda's low belly and she looked away. Mercifully, Will arrived then to begin their meeting. As they talked, Brenda sniped at Sharon several times, and Sharon gave it right back. When the meeting ended, Will excused Sharon but made Brenda stay.

"What in the hell is going on with you two? It's worse than usual."

Brenda felt the familiar blush creep into her cheeks.

"It's nothing, Will. We just don't get along."

"Well, you better figure out how to blow off that steam, both of you, before it starts affecting your work. Consider that an order."

_The next time Brenda woke, it was to a gentle jostling at her shoulder. She rolled over to Sharon watching her from the edge of the bed. Sharon had slipped her shirt back on and the garment hung loose and unbuttoned over her torso; Brenda fought the urge to slip a hand inside to stroke a generous curve of breast._

_"I didn't know if you wanted me to go," Sharon said simply._

_Brenda propped herself up on her elbows. "I'd like you to stay. I'd really like you to stay."_

The hard edge of the countertop in Brenda and Fritz's kitchen dug deeply into Brenda's low back. The sensation barely registered though; three glasses of wine in her system were dulling the pain quite effectively.

And Sharon's mouth, hot against hers, was distracting.

When Sharon bit down hard on her lower lip, Brenda yelped and pushed Sharon back against the table where Fritz still sat agape. For a split second, Brenda saw the scene progression through Fritz's eyes: the quick and heavy drinking as the two women fortified themselves for what they both knew was about to happen, the gratuitous bickering that always brought them both to arousal, and now, the shameless, desperate groping not two feet from her husband, who had orchestrated the entire thing.

Brenda couldn't suppress a laugh at the absurdity of it all.

"What's so funny?" Sharon snarled, her lips wine-stained and swollen.

Brenda looked over Sharon's shoulder at Fritz, and then back at Sharon.

"Take me to bed. Now."

_Sharon's joints creaked as she climbed back into bed next to Brenda. She could already tell she'd be sore in the morning, in her limbs as well as more intimate places. She felt bruises forming on her hips and in the bathroom mirror she'd noticed bite marks on her shoulders. Her hair was a mess too, knotted and kinked where Brenda had wound her fists in it._

_Sharon sprawled out on the mattress. She was glad Fritz had left to sleep elsewhere. The bed was crowded and too warm with the three of them in it, and Sharon wanted Brenda to herself. _

To her surprise, Fritz barely touched her.

In his defense, in their eagerness to devour each other, Sharon and Brenda had not given him much opportunity to participate. Once in the bedroom, the two women had fallen to the bed in a frenzy of popping buttons, bites, and scratches. They struggled against one another for dominance, pinning wrists and tugging hair.

Eventually Sharon managed to straddle Brenda's waist and in one smooth motion, pushed up the blonde's shirt and bra to cover her breasts in Sharon's hands. Brenda gasped, and the sound and sensation for both women halted their forceful scrabbling. Brenda reached up to cover Sharon's hands with her own, and encouraged the older woman to knead her breasts slowly.

Sharon felt the bed dip behind her. Fritz leaned forward on one knee to unfasten Sharon's bra and then backed away once more, leaving Brenda to reach up and pull the slip of fabric away. Sharon leaned down over Brenda to press their torsos together, and each sighed into the other's neck at the warm contact.

They moved slowly then, their earlier frenzy blending into cautious exploration. For all their workplace antagonism, Sharon found they were remarkably compatible in bed. Perhaps it wasn't so shocking, she thought, given how practiced they were at give-and-take. Sharon wanted to please Brenda, and she caught Brenda searching her face to confirm her own pleasure.

They touched each other, Brenda leaning over Sharon this time. Sharon slid a hand into Brenda's hair to cup the back of her skull and pull her down for a kiss. Brenda ground harder against her hand as their tongues touched, mewling softly into Sharon's mouth before drawing back to lock eyes with the older woman.

What Sharon saw there made her nervous, more so because she knew the feelings were reflected in her own face. Brenda was looking down at her with trust, affection, desire ... and sadness.

_Brenda traced agitated patterns on Sharon's stomach. _

_Sharon couldn't sleep either. She thought of Fritz now, in his sweet innocence and good intentions. _

_This night hadn't been about relieving tension, not in the way Fritz hoped. Sharon knew - and she knew the blonde fretting in her arms also knew - that this was far from a one-night stand. The two women had been careening toward each other from the moment they met, and nothing, not even Brenda's marriage vows, were going to be able to stop this thing between them._

_Sharon could only hope that Fritz was sleeping soundly in the next room. It would be his last night to rest with his heart in one piece._


End file.
